THE TURK AND MY MOTHER

Name: THE TURK AND MY MOTHER
Author: Mary Helen Stefaniak
ISBN: 0-393-05924-3

by Mary Helen Stefaniak ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2004

Overdone and confusing. An impossibly tangled narrative strangles what, in parts, is a truly fascinating and intricate first...

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Rambling tale about several generations of Serbo-Croatians who leave the Old Country for America.

Mostly, Stefaniak (Self Storage, stories, not reviewed) presents a family saga, passed down from generation to generation, with all the attendant inaccuracies, lacunae, and outright deceptions that are the stock in trade of every family tree. There are, however, a few things we can be sure of. We begin in the little Croatian village of Novo Selo, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until WWI. Shortly before the war breaks out in 1914, a young man named Josef Iljasic leaves Novo Selo for Milwaukee, intending to make his fortune in a year or two before returning home to his wife Agnes. But the war intervenes, Josef is stranded in America, and Agnes is left to fend for herself, her daughter, and her mother-in-law in a village now bereft of men. Into this scene walks Tas Akbulut, a Turkish (or is he Serbian?) prisoner of war who’s billeted at Agnes’s house and assigned to help out with odd jobs throughout the village. Without giving anything away, we can report that something transpires between Agnes and Tas. That much becomes obvious when we jump ahead a few years ti find that Agnes has taken her children and gone to live with Josef in Milwaukee, and Tas manages to make his way to Wisconsin to visit her. He has an easier trip than Josef’s brother Marko, who was thought to have died in the war but actually became a POW (for the other side) and ended up living in Russia, where he survived the Revolution by playing the violin. There are also stories about the blind gypsy who taught Marko the violin, the woman Josef loved in Milwaukee, and the trip that Josef’s granddaughter Mary Helen takes to meet her relatives in the Old Country.

Overdone and confusing. An impossibly tangled narrative strangles what, in parts, is a truly fascinating and intricate first novel.

Pub Date: June 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-393-05924-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.